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[Vukytzar]

Hey all of you FUN lovers! How many z-levels down can marksdwarfs and siege wepons shoot? Im thinking of building two towers on my fort entrance...

[Bouchart]

Siege weapons can't target up or down z-levels and are generally useless outside of some very specific situations where other ways of fort defense would be better anyway.

Marksdwarves can fire up or down a few z-levels but they aren't that great at it.  Ever have a group of marksdwarvevs try to shoot down a bird?  They don't do it very well.

[martinuzz]

As far as I understand, travelling one z level vertically, no matter if it's up or down, decreases the crossbow bolt's remaining flight path by the same amount as traveling a tile horizontally. In other words, shooting from high ground does not increase range, but decreases it (the higher the shooting platform, the shorter the range)

[Dozebôm Lolumzalěs]

Sounds right.

[Deboche]

Also, if goblins can shoot back, they're usually deadly even if your dwarves are behind fortifications because they all fire at once.

And marksdwarves in general are really annoying. You can station them somewhere but that's no guarantee they'll go to exactly where you need them, they don't always bring bolts or the right kind of bolts and don't quickly grab more when they run out and sometimes they decide to just run at the enemy to bash them with the crossbows.

We're all holding our collective breaths for some sort of control over military tactics.

[PatrikLundell]

Ballistae can be used to fire down long corridors, though a fortification in one end and out though another in the other end for arrow recovery, provided the operator has trained enough on a catapult to fire straight. Apart from that, ballistae are great for disintegrating trees standing in water that are in the way, and can also be used to eliminate flying campers by building a tower to fire from (works even on flying, camping, Titans).

My experience of X-bow dorfs are rather disappointing and frustrating. I've started using them (1 or 2) in 0.42.03 for beak dog execution, though (release beak dog from a cage behind a raised drawbridge with a lever, use "defend burrows" orders to get X-bow dorfs to fire through the fortification. Takes a while with wooden bolts, but even a giant can be eliminated that way).

[Geltor]

siege weapons are a useless waste of time. even if you build ballistas to fire down a long hallway, what will most likely happen is your operators will run away in fear when they see enemies or the arrows just hit the wall. you can probably train their discipline or make clever use of bridges both to guard them and to recover the arrows..but at that kind of effort you might aswell use more efficient traps and cages...

marksdwarves are useful against enemies too dangerous for melee dwarves, such as forgotton beasts/fiends/titans and spiders. in other cases theyre very inefficient. they also tend to jump through fortifications and kill themselves

[nomad_delta]

I actually love using Marksdwarves and think they're awesome for fortress defense, but they definitely require a bit of work and some significant fortress design/planning in order to get them to behave properly.  Getting them to train/fight properly got a LOT easier since Toady fixed the long-standing bug with training bolts vs combat bolts as of version 0.42.03.  In particular I find that you need to use Burrows (W) combined with "Defend Burrows" orders on the schedule to get your marksdwarves to reliably stand on the correct side of the defense fortifications.  The squad move command you're used to using for melee squads just isn't accurate enough and will result in some of them standing on the inside for the fortifications while others rush outside.

[Bouchart]

10 or so well trained, well equipped melee dwarves with shields can tear apart a siege singlehandedly.  Marksdwarves aren't terribly useful unless you are fighting near weird terrain, like high cliffs or lava, or the enemy you are fighting has some special ability that makes fighting close up dangerous, such as syndromes.

[martinuzz]

The trick with marksdwarves is that you need to give them silver warhammers that can shoot bolts (or was it copper? I keep forgetting which is better for impact damage). Or heavier ones if smithings moods provide.

It helps a ton that in this version, marksdwarves will actually both use a training barracks as well as a shooting range. You can assign both to your ranged squad, and it works fine. They actually level combat skills now. Don't forget to give them a shield early.

[Deboche]

It helps a ton that in this version, marksdwarves will actually both use a training barracks as well as a shooting range. You can assign both to your ranged squad, and it works fine. They actually level combat skills now. Don't forget to give them a shield early.

This is actually the first version where I can't get them to use the archery targets.

[PatrikLundell]

siege weapons are a useless waste of time. even if you build ballistas to fire down a long hallway, what will most likely happen is your operators will run away in fear when they see enemies or the arrows just hit the wall. you can probably train their discipline or make clever use of bridges both to guard them and to recover the arrows..but at that kind of effort you might aswell use more efficient traps and cages...

marksdwarves are useful against enemies too dangerous for melee dwarves, such as forgotton beasts/fiends/titans and spiders. in other cases theyre very inefficient. they also tend to jump through fortifications and kill themselves

To use ballistae effectively in a hallway setup you should build the ballista a fair bit from the fortification so the enemy doesn't get within sight of the siege operator.

[Vukytzar]

Thanks for replies! I've built 10x10 keep around entrance and placed fortifications on top, just one z level up. Problem is I've got 4 very good marksdwarfs in last migration wave and i dont have any melee weapon dwarfs so I'll have to rely heavily on x-bows. I have killed werebear beast with those 4 marksdwarfs and although it took some time they did their job (I was bit lucky cuz first bolt severd bears paw so it was moving very slowly). So whats your advice; to abandon my marksdwarfs trainig and start melee squad from scratch although I dont have exp. Melee dwarfs or to train more marksdwarfs and build traps?

[Insanegame27]

First of all:

10 or so well trained, well equipped melee dwarves with shields can tear apart a siege singlehandedly.  Marksdwarves aren't terribly useful unless you are fighting near weird terrain, like high cliffs or lava, or the enemy you are fighting has some special ability that makes fighting close up dangerous, such as syndromes.

Melee dwarves are better at fighting in rough terrain, whereas ranged dwarves work better where there are impenetrable barriers of empty space or (to a lesser extent) rivers. Melee dwarves are good at trench combat too.


Second of all:

Thanks for replies! I've built 10x10 keep around entrance and placed fortifications on top, just one z level up. Problem is I've got 4 very good marksdwarfs in last migration wave and i dont have any melee weapon dwarfs so I'll have to rely heavily on x-bows. I have killed werebear beast with those 4 marksdwarfs and although it took some time they did their job (I was bit lucky cuz first bolt severd bears paw so it was moving very slowly). So whats your advice; to abandon my marksdwarfs trainig and start melee squad from scratch although I dont have exp. Melee dwarfs or to train more marksdwarfs and build traps?

A few things here: A marksdwarf is only as good as his bolts. If he has featherwood bolts he will do nothing. Steel bolts work the best IMO. Bone can be mass-produced and are good for things like an elf or gobbo siege. Humans tend to be more armored so iron or steel is preferable here. That said, I accidentally pissed off the humies once and they brought me a siege of 80-90 not even counting mounts. I had a fort of 80.
First thing that happened was FPS drop. Second thing that happened was me mass-drafting everyone into conscript squads of a uniform of any helmet, any shield and a crossbow. Ammunition was whatever bolts they could get their hands on. I ended up with my 20 dedicated legendary melee dwarves (5 sword, 5 axes in the 'severance' squad, 5 hammers and 5 maces in the 'pulveriscence' squad) amassed on the inside of my gate with 40ish dwarves with crossbows standing by for me to drop the drawbridge and give them line of sight to the enemy.


I dropped the drawbridge and instantly took another hit to FPS as 40 wooden bolts flew into the humie ranks. The battle was over before the meleedwarves even got there. The marksdwarves got about 5 shots off each.


TL;DR? Marksdorfs are great

[martinuzz]

It helps a ton that in this version, marksdwarves will actually both use a training barracks as well as a shooting range. You can assign both to your ranged squad, and it works fine. They actually level combat skills now. Don't forget to give them a shield early.

This is actually the first version where I can't get them to use the archery targets.

Weird. Did you accidentally forget to set the shooting direction right?